“Sanctions cause only damage”

“Sanctions only damage our relations. Political tensions moved to undermine our economies,” the president of Foundation for World Wide Cooperation Romano Prodi said at the Fifth Eurasian Economic Forum in Verona.

According to the ex-chairman of the European Commission, from 2013 to 2016, the European exports to Eurasia fell from USD150 bln to USD84 bln. “That’s go beyond any explanation. And I remind you that Eurasia is the fourth largest European trading partner after the US, China and Switzerland.”

“Looking closely to the data for each country, we see that with Russia we had the largest drop in trade, however, that also happened with other Eurasian partners: exports to Russia fell from USD118 bln to 70 bln, to Belarus – from 9 bln to 5.8bln, to Kazakhstan — 8.6 bln to 6.8 bln, to Armenia – from 1.1 bln to USD760 mln, and to Kyrgyzstan – from 70omln to 400mln,” Mr Prodi said.

According to Italian former politician and economist, the current political picture is very sad. However, earlier, “back in 2002-2003’s, Europe had been trying very hard to establish a close cooperation with Russia, – Mr Prodi stated. – Today the situation is different. Back then, we were building, not talking. The idea was to build a free trading area from the Atlantic to the Urals, and further. Now, together with our mutual mistakes, instead of building bridges, we are advancing with battlefield, and all of that is a huge historical mistake. Because that’s what caused tensions between the US and Russia, and now it is much harder to come up with an agreement on such global issues as the Middle East. Frankly speaking, without an agreement between Russia and the US there is no way to make a peace in Syria. The weakness of Europe in such matters becomes too obvious, as it should have been a partner to deal with such issues as the Ukraine and even the Middle East, but it is not.”